or an
afternoon and evening. Everybody is delighted to see her, and wants to
have her for his or her particular friend. She and I have such jolly
walks and talks; she hardly ever calls me back or puts me down now."

After pronouncing this high encomium it was rather a shock to Rose not
only to incur Annie's righteous displeasure, but to discover that on
occasions Annie could be as severe and relentless in her sentences as
ever.

Rose, like most middle-class girls not fairly out of their teens, and
committed to their own discretion in the huge motley world of London,
had been solemnly charged to behave with the greatest wariness. She was
to treat every man or woman she encountered well-nigh as a dangerous
enemy in disguise till her suspicions were proved to be misplaced, and
the stranger shown to Rose's satisfaction and that of her seniors and
guardians to be a harmless friend.

To do Rose justice, she remembered for the most part what had been told
her, and was careful not to expose herself to the slightest chance of
misapprehension--not to say rudeness, such as would have frightened her
mother and incensed her father. Rose would not be tempted by the
fearless independence of Hester Jennings and her cronies. They
maintained, in theory at least, that though there might be dens of vice
and dark places of cruelty in the great city, for those whose feet trod
the downward path, yet its crowded thoroughfares, to those who honestly
went about their own business, or to the messengers of divine charity
and mercy, were as safe, and safer, than any quiet country road.
Womanhood in the strength and confidence of its purity and fearlessness
might traverse them alone at any hour of the day or night.

But Rose submitted to the ordinary if antiquated code, which implies the
timidity and defencelessness of young women whenever and wherever
assailed. She had not gone far enough in her emancipation to reckon as
part of it, immunity from apprehension of every kind, including the
strife of evil tongues.

However, one day in the beginning of May, Rose went to Covent Garden in
pursuit of a pot of tulips, which she suddenly felt she must have,
without delay, as an accessory in one of her sketches. She was coming
home laden with her spoil by way of Burnet's, where there was an equal
necessity for her to procure, on the instant, a yard or two of gauzy
stuff of a certain uncertain hue, when a thunder-storm unexpectedly
broke over the haunt